"I just don't like people talking that way about her," Pekach blurted. "It's not like what everybody thinks."

"What everybody thinks, Dave, is that you have a nice girl," Wohl said. "If anybody thought different, you wouldn't get teased."

"That's right, Dave," Sabara agreed solemnly.

Pekach looked intently at each of them. He smiled, shrugged, and walked out of the room.

When he was out of earshot, Sabara said, "But you were right, that's what you call it, a nooner."

"Captain Sabara, for a Sunday school teacher, you're a dirty old man," Wohl said. "I should be back in an hour. If something important comes up, put it on the radio."

"Yes, sir," Sabara said.

Martha Peebles was on the lawn, armed with the largest hedge clippers Dave Pekach had ever seen-they looked like two of King Arthur's swords or something stuck together- when he drove into the drive. She waved it at him when she saw him.

He parked the car in the garage, where it wouldn't attract too much attention, and walked toward the house. She met him under the portico.

"Hello, Precious," she said. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he said. "What are you going to do with that thing?"

She pointed the clippers in the general direction of his crotch and opened and closed it. Both of his hands dropped to protect the area.

"Oh, come on," she said. "You know I wouldn't want to hurt that."

"I don't know," he said. "I hope not."

"Something is wrong," she said. "I can tell. Something happen at Bustleton and Bowler?"

"Nothing that anybody can do anything about," Pekach said.

"Well," she said, taking his arm. "You can tell me all about it over lunch. I made French onion soup. Made it. Not from one of those packet things. And a salad. With Roquefort dressing."

"Sounds good," he said.

"And there'snobody in the house," she said. "Which I just happen to mentionen passant and not to give you any ideas."

"I always wonder when I eat this stuff," Jason Washington said as he skillfully picked up a piece of Peking Beef with chopsticks and dipped it in a mixture of mustard and plum preserves, "if they really eat it in Peking, or whether it was invented here by some Chinaman who figured Americans will eat anything."

"It's good," Peter Wohl said.

"They use a lot of monosodium glutamate," Washington said. "To bring the taste out. It doesn't bother me, but it gets to Martha. She thought she was having a heart attack-angina pectoris."

"Really?"

"Pain in the pectoral muscles," Washington explained, and pointed to his pectorals.

"She went to the doctor and told him that whenever she had Chinese food, she had angina pectoris. He said, in that case, don't eat Chinese food. And then, when she calmed down, he told her that making diagnoses was his business, and about the monosodium glutamate."

"I didn't know that," Wohl said, "about monosodium glutamate."

In his good time, Wohl thought, Jason will get around to telling me what's on his mind. He didn't ask if I was free for lunch because he didn't want to eat Peking Beef alone.

"I feel really bad about Matt Payne," Washington said. "If I had any idea he was going to see that Detweiler girl, I would have stopped him."

So that's what's on his mind.

"I know that," Wohl said. "He went over there to help me."

"He thinks you're really something special," Washington said.

"He thinks you make Sherlock Holmes look like a mental retard," Wohl replied.

"If I was Matthew M. Payne and they put me back in uniform and in a 12^th District wagon or handed me a wrench and told me to go around and turn off fire hydrants, I would quit."

"I think he probably will."

"We need young cops like that, Peter," Washington said.

"So?"

"I have a few favors owed me," Washington said. "How sore would you be if I called them in?"

"You'd be wasting them," Wohl said. "Czernick decided the way to cover his ass was to jump on the kid before the mayor told him to. He knew that would piss off a lot of people. Denny Coughlin, for one. If Coughlin goes to the mayor, and I really hope he doesn't, it would make the mayor choose between him and Czernick. I'm not sure how that would go. And while I agree, I would hate to see Matt resign, and I wouldreally hate to see Denny Coughlin retire. I'd like to see Coughlin as commissioner."

"So you're saying, just let the kid go, right? 'For the good of the Department'?"

"Pekach and Sabara say they know people in the 12^th. They'll put in a good word for him."

"You won't?"

"Feldman is the captain. When I was working as a staff inspector, I put his brother-in-law away."

"Christ, I forgot that. Lieutenant in Traffic? Extortion? They gave him five to fifteen?"

Wohl nodded. "I really don't think Captain Feldman would be receptive to anything kind I would have to say about Matt Payne."

"Interesting, isn't it, that Czernick sent Payne to the 12^th?"

Wohl grunted.

"You think I could talk to Payne, tell him to hang in?"

"I wish you would. I think you might tip the scales."

"Okay," Jason Washington said, nodding his head. And then he changed the subject: "So what's the real story about DeZego and the pimp getting hit?"

"It's your job, you tell me," Wohl said.

"You haven't been thinking about it? That something smells with Savarese pointing Pekach at the pimp? Doing it himself?"

"I've been thinking that it smells," Wohl replied.

"Intelligence has a guy, I guess you know, in the Savarese family."

Wohl nodded.

"I talked to him about an hour ago," Jason Washington said.

"Intelligence know you did that?"

"Intelligence doesn't even know I know who he is," Washington said. "He tells me that the word in the family is that Tony the Zee ripped off the pimp, the pimp popped him, and Savarese ordered the pimp hit. I even got a name for the doer, not that it would do us any good."

"One of Savarese's thugs?"

"One of his bodyguards. Gian-Carlo Rosselli, also known as Charley Russell."

"Who has eight people ready to swear he was in Atlantic City taking the sun with his wife and kids?"

Washington nodded.

"Tony the Zee ripped off the pimp?" Wohl asked. "How?"

"Drugs, what else?" Washington replied.

"You don't sound as if you believe that," Wohl said.

"I think that's what Savarese wants the family to think," Washington said.

"Why, do you think?"

"I think Savarese had DeZego hit, and doesn't want the family to know about it."

"Why?"

"Why did he have him hit? Couple of possibilities. Maybe Tony went in business for himself driving the shrimp up from the Gulf Coast. That would be enough. Tony the Zee was ambitious but not too smart. He might have figured, who would ever know if he brought a kilo of cocaine for himself back up here in his suitcase."

"Interesting," Wohl said.

"He was also quite a swordsman," Washington went on, "who could have played hide-the-salami with somebody's wife. They take the honor of their women seriously; adultery is a mortal sin."

"Wouldn't Savarese have made an example of him, if that was the case?"

"Not necessarily," Washington said. "Maybe the lady was important to him. Her reputation. Her honor. He might have ordered him hit to remove temptation. It didn't have to be a wife. It could have been a daughter-I mean, unmarried daughter. If it came out that Tony haddishonored somebody's daughter, she would have a hell of a time finding a respectable husband. These people are very big, Peter, on respectability."

Wohl chuckled.

"You never heard of honor among thieves?" Washington asked innocently.